Dance Marathon

Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation creates a future of hope for children and families worldwide by eradicating pediatric AIDS, providing care and treatment to people with HIV/AIDS, and accelerating the discovery of new treatments for other serious and life-threatening pediatric illnesses.

About The Foundation

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation was born from the most powerful force of all: a mother's love for her children. Elizabeth Glaser contracted the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth to her daughter, Ariel. She and her husband, Paul, later learned that Elizabeth had unknowingly passed the virus on to Ariel through breast milk and that their son, Jake, had contracted the virus in utero.

The Glasers discovered, in the course of trying to treat Ariel, that drug companies and health agencies had no idea that HIV/AIDS was prevalent among children. The only drugs on the market were for adults — nothing had been tested or approved for children. Which meant that there was no medical treatment for the infection that was quickly destroying Ariel's life.

Ariel lost her battle with AIDS in 1988. Fully aware that Jake's life was also in danger, Elizabeth rose to action. She approached her close friends, Susie Zeegen and Susan DeLaurentis, for help in creating a foundation that would serve to raise money for basic HIV/AIDS research. The Foundation had one critical mission: to bring hope to children with AIDS. Few researchers were focusing on issues specific to pediatric HIV/AIDS, there were no drugs available for children, and the infection rate was rapidly rising. Elizabeth, Susie and Susan sought to change that harsh reality.

Since its founding in 1988, the Foundation has become the leading national nonprofit organization dedicated to the fight against pediatric AIDS. Today, there is an entire community of pediatric AIDS researchers that didn't exist before. Thanks in part to Foundation efforts, research and effective intervention have drastically reduced mother-to-child transmission of HIV to less than two percent in industrialized nations. The Foundation has also expanded its focus to battle the HIV/AIDS pandemic around the globe. Its international programs have rapidly expanded across the developing world, battling mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV and bringing care and treatment to the families who need them.

Your participation in Dance Marathon is vital to the efforts of the Foundation and its efforts to help children and families around the world. Learn more about the Foundation.

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